LISTEN TO YOUR SENSES is a multisensory experiential tool designed to stimulate a deep and intuitive exploration of one’s relationship with colors, materials, and atmospheres.
Through a guided, eyes-closed experience, learners are invited to engage with tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and auditory stimuli, activating memory, imagination, and the emotional system. Each stimulus is interpreted using freely chosen shapes and colors, generating a personal and symbolic visual representation. The approach is immersive and non-verbal, allowing even those with expression difficulties or a preference for communicating through the body and senses to participate fully.
The purpose is not to test skills, but to encourage the spontaneous emergence of individual sensory preferences connected to the perception of space, comfort, and well-being.
This tool offers an alternative perspective for design: it starts from perception rather than rational thought, aiming to create environments that speak to the senses before the mind, fostering authentic and profound connections between space and person.
How the tool works
Using this tool goes beyond passive exposure to sensory stimuli. The experience is structured through expressive activities designed to engage the body, imagination, and memory. Each sensory exercise is performed with closed eyes to encourage deep, personal listening and is then creatively processed through drawings, abstract shapes, or simple marks on dedicated sheets.
This approach allows learners to freely and intuitively express their perceptions, producing a visual narrative of their moods, preferences, and sensations. No prior drawing skills are required; every mark is meaningful as an authentic reflection of the lived experience. The non-verbal nature of the activity is a key strength, promoting inclusion for individuals with linguistic, cognitive, or emotional challenges and enabling direct communication with one’s inner world.
Final reflection guidelines
At the end of the four sensory experiences offered by the LISTEN TO YOUR SENSE tool – touch, taste, hearing, and smell – each learner is guided through an individual reflection phase. This step is essential for transforming the internal experience into a recognizable, communicable, and, if desired, shareable form.
This concluding phase is not evaluative; rather, it serves as a moment of experience consolidation, where personal sensations are translated into signs, words, images, and symbols. It is here that perception becomes thought, sensation becomes trace, and awareness begins to emerge as a foundation for future spatial design.
The reflection can take place through two complementary modalities – verbal and creative – which can coexist and integrate according to each learner’s preferences and expressive abilities.
In the verbal modality, learners articulate what they experienced using words, short phrases, or free associations, responding to guiding prompts such as:
- Which experience was the most pleasant or meaningful?
- Which color stood out most strongly in your mind?
- Which sensation caused discomfort or surprise?
- What memories or emotions did that scent, sound, or texture evoke?
This modality activates reflective and narrative thinking, allowing learners to organize their experience and name what was internally triggered.
The creative modality, on the other hand, provides a space for expressive freedom: learners are invited to draw, color, paste, write, or construct small symbolic maps representing the mental images, emotions, and connections that arose during the sensory experience.
A realistic representation is not required; the aim is subjective translation. Learners may draw an abstract shape inspired by a sound, choose colors that “accompanied” a taste, depict a texture with bold or soft strokes, or create collages using cut-outs, keywords, or tactile materials. Every gesture – even minimal – carries meaning, and what is recorded on the page tells much more than the perceived object: it reflects how the experience was lived.
This activity not only stimulates cognitive functions related to sensory memory, categorization, and synthesis but also supports and values the diverse cognitive and communicative styles of learners.
Even individuals with linguistic challenges, emotional resistance, or relational difficulties can engage with the experience through a more intuitive, bodily, and visual language.
This reflection moment is not only a concluding phase but also a bridge toward conscious design: giving form to internal experiences allows learners to begin recognizing their perceptual needs and desires, and to imagine – on a deeper level – the type of space they wish to inhabit or create for themselves and others.
Thus, the representation is not merely an aesthetic product but a transformative act that connects individual feeling with a collective vision of a welcoming space.
Made with love by Wellhome team
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
